April | 2019 | fibonaccisusan

The Whitney Museum’s current exhibition “Spilling Over Painting Color in the 1960’s” features work from their collection that explore the perception of bold color. Geometry was a powerful vehicle of expression for a number of artists represented.

Alvin Loving’s “Septehedron 34” acrylic on shaped canvas from 1970 presents a 3-D projection of an imaginary seven sided figure on to the 2-D plane. Made up of a lattice of seven right triangles , the viewer is looking directly at one triangular face, surrounded by three other triangles with the three remaining triangles intersecting in the background.

“The Fourth of the Three” from 1963 by Richard Anuszkiewicz has only three colors of paint but the image created appears to have a much more complex palate of various intensities. The undulating grid of not quite all squares was manipulated by varying width of the red lines between the shapes. Using a mathematical plan, the lines are thin at the four sides square panel, then growing thicker, before getting thin again at the center. This creates the optical illusion of movement.

Susan Happersett

The exhibition “Playing Games: Chance, Skill, and Abstraction” at the Ricco/Maresca gallery presents antique handmade game boards along with contemporary paintings that feature the similar mathematical imagery. Before parlor games were mass-produced artisans hand painted the geometric patterns onto wood boards.

This is late 19th century American Anonymous example of a Parcheesi variation board game employs flat color shapes and rotational symmetry comparable to a 20th century abstract painting.

George Widener has created work that continues that tradition.

“Magic Squares” the mixed media work from 2016 is 16 framed rectangular sheets presented in a 4X4 arrangement. Each one features a number from 1 to 16. The magic is in the arrangement, the numbers in each row, column, and diagonal add up to 34!